53' | Arts&Culture | HD

ITA 2024

Lilium Distribution

for Rai 5

Experimenter of materials and forms Mario Ceroli is one of the most innovative personalities in the contemporary Italian art. Abruzzese by birth but Roman by adoption, he graduated from 'Accademia delle Belle Arti' in Rome where studied with great masters such as Leoncillo, Fazzini and Colla. He started his career in 1958 winning the prize for young sculptors at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome with a work made of logs and nails.
“I chose wood because I was very poor, I had to work with waste materials” says the artist and for Ceroli, wood is a primary, available material from which the images spring.
In parallel, however, the artist also experimented with different materials: ceramics, glass, paper, fabric even water and ice. Today, Mario Ceroli is considered one of the leading exponents of the so - called 'School of Piazza del Popolo', sometimes referred to as Italian Pop Art. Ceroli, however, always demonstrated great originality in terms of themes, ideologies and technical skill, departing from the American experience, his strong craftsmanship, far from the industrial techniques used by the American Pop movement, would bring him closer to the artists of the nascent Italian pop art current called “Arte Povera“ into which, Ceroli was immediately co-opted.
For the artist from Abruzzo, there is love for the material, but there is also the theatrical representation. ‘I used the theatre as a gallery,’ the artist says. So Ceroli lends his art for Ronconi's Riccardo III, for Pasolini's Orgia, for Il Trovatore with Patroni Griffi, for Norma with Bolognini. The stage and the set become the ideal place to set exhibitions that are too large and complex to be set in a art gallery.